But if someone walks behind him--to take care of him----'

'Oh, police protection?' Hamilton asked.

'Yes; certainly. Why not?'

'Out of the question. His Excellency never would stand it. He would say,
"I don't choose to run life on that principle," and he would smile a
benign smile on you, and you couldn't get him to say another word on the
subject.'

'But we can put it on him, whether he likes it or not. Good heavens!
Hamilton, you must see that it isn't only a question of him; it is a
question of the credit and the honour of England, and of the London
police system.'

'That's a little different from a question of the honour of England, is
it not?' Hamilton asked with a smile.

'I don't see it,' Sir Rupert answered, almost angrily. 'I take it that
one test of the civilisation of a society is the efficiency of its
police system. I take it that if a metropolis like London cannot secure
the personal safety of an honoured and distinguished guest like
Ericson--himself an Englishman, too--by Jove! it forfeits in so far its
claim to be considered a capital of civilisation. I really think you
might put this to Ericson.'

'I think you had better put it to him yourself, Sir Rupert. He will take
it better from you than he would from me. You know I have some of his
own feeling about it, and if I were he I fancy I should feel as he
feels. I wouldn't accept police protection against those fellows.'

'Why don't you go about with him yourself? You two would be quite
enough, I dare say. _He_ wouldn't be on his guard, but _you_ would, for
_him_.'

'Oh, if he would let _me_, that would be all right enough. I am always
pretty well armed, and I have learned, from his very self, the way to
use weapons. I think I could take pretty good care of him. But then, he
won't always let me go with him, and he will persist in walking home
from dinner parties and studying, as he says, the effect of London by
night.'

'As if he were a painter or a poet,' Sir Rupert said in a tone which did
not seem to imply that he considered painting and poetry among the
grandest occupations of humanity.

'Why, only the other night,' Hamilton said, 'I was dining with some
fellows from the United States at the Buckingham Palace Hotel, and I
walked across St. James's Park on my way to look in at the Voyagers'
Club, and as I was crossing the bridge I saw a man leaning on it and
looking at the pond, and the sky, and the moon--and when I came nearer I
saw it